REMOTE CONTROL | DANTON REMOTO | 03/10/2009 12:53 AM www.abs-cbnnews.com Twisted 8: the Night of the Living Twisted is the latest reincarnation of the series of books that has made Jessica Zafra famous – or notorious, if you want to put it that way. But hey, along with the books of Ambeth Ocampo, Margie Holmes and, okay, myself, these are the only books from Anvil that get reprinted every year or so. In short, the demand is there, the readers are present – and we meet them headlong. Ige Ramos of Zeus Books co-published this book, and in his wicked intro he writes: “Twisted 8: The Night of the Living Dead is designed like a non-linear novel with the titles of the essays as sub-headings. One can arbitrarily peruse the book, like an iPod in random mode. It contains exactly what one would expect from a Jessica Zafra collection: essays pertaining to cats, books, film, travel, tennis and personal diaries, plus 3 Bonus Tracks of unpublished stories. Zeus Books – the name Jessica and I agreed ...

Review of MILK BY Jessica Zafra www.jessicarulestheuniverse.com The events described in Milk seem like records from a distant era, so it’s startling to realize that they happened just 30 years ago. Movies based on the lives of public figures tend to play like history lessons—you keep glancing at your watch to see how much more edification you must endure—but Gus Van Sant has crafted a vital and compelling piece of cinema. Based on the life of the assassinated gay rights activist turned San Francisco supervisor, Milk is the story of how one citizen becomes involved in the political life of a nation. Harvey, a New York-born insurance company employee, moves to San Francisco with his boyfriend and opens a camera shop on the Castro. It’s the early Seventies: a gay man risks losing his job if he is exposed. He soon finds that San Francisco is not as tolerant as he’d hoped, and the Christian right is waging war on anyone who disagrees with them. Harvey quickly marshals the power of numbers, ...

EMOTIONAL WEATHER REPORT By Jessica Zafra Updated December 12, 2008 12:00 AM Philippine Star www.philstar.net Several weeks ago I got an e-mail from my former professor, Dr. Elmer Ordonez of the University of the Philippines. As one of the conveners of the annual conference of the Philippine PEN, he was inviting me to be a panelist in the second session, “Gender Issues in Literature.” I approach literary conferences with some trepidation: I am ignorant of the critical jargon, plus I’m not entirely sure what a gender issue is and whether I have one. However, this was an invitation I could not refuse. It is an honor to be asked to speak at a PEN conference, and it would be churlish to decline a summons from my thesis adviser. In my senior year, when I had to decide on a topic for my thesis in Comparative Literature, I picked my favorite writer, J.D. Salinger. It was the post-EDSA I era, and The Catcher In The Rye and Franny and Zooey were not generally considered socially-relevant nati...